Endgame, p.38
Endgame, page 38
As reasonable and seemingly straightforward as this is, the possible birth of a British republic is a long way off. A lot of this has to do with the perceived popularity of the royal family, even in their current fragmented state. Republicans argue that the members of the population who passively support the monarchy believe the family are popular, profitable, and harmless. Anti-monarchists claim this is a common fallacy that is easy to disprove. With regards to their popularity, the feeling is that most of the people who like the monarchy do so because they believe others do as well, often a direct result of deceptive polling and reporting. As an example, if there is an opinion poll that states 75 percent of the population want to “keep the monarchy,” the result is often misreported in the media as 75 percent “love the monarchy,” which obviously makes it sound more popular than it really is. Keeping something doesn’t always mean you love it. That’s why attics and garages are full of stuff we want to hold on to but don’t value enough to use or display.
When it comes to the profitability belief, the anti-monarchy stance is that there’s no real evidence of this. It’s certainly true that they are tourist attractions, but there is no precise value attached to the monarchical revenue stream—no matter how many figures are flung around every year. Staunch royalists will say the royal family are the country’s biggest attraction, but a closer look at statistics available from Britain’s Association of Leading Visitor Attractions reveals that it’s the country’s heritage sites such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London that consistently feature at the top of London’s most-visited attractions. And while Windsor Great Park might be a popular destination, royal residences such as Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace, and Windsor Castle have yet to feature in their annual top ten lists. To put it comparatively, Britain’s average tourism revenue pre-Covid was £127 billion and royal tourism accounted for approximately £500 million of it—0.3 percent of that number.
There is a habituated opinion, however, that while the British monarchy is a peculiar, even frustrating institution, at the end of the day, it is a mostly innocuous one. In the 2014 BBC program Martin Amis’s England, Amis, who was not known for fuzzy feelings toward the “philistine” royal family, echoed this point of view: “It’s connected with our love of [1970s British TV drama set in a posh London townhouse] Upstairs, Downstairs—those country house dramas. It’s nostalgia for that class society. It’s all connected, it can’t not be connected. But it’s relatively harmless.” For years, this notion that the family may be innocuous aristocratic buffoons has provided the monarchy with an invulnerability that protected some of their darker secrets. But this just isn’t the case anymore; the monarchy is more vulnerable now than it’s ever been. The popular Queen Elizabeth II’s reign is long gone, Prince Andrew dragged the Crown’s reputation through puddles of disgrace, the King’s business dealings threw a shadow over his early days on the throne, and Harry and Meghan bore a hole through the Palace wall.
More recently, deeper insights into the royal family’s private wealth and finances have revealed a world of secrecy that obscures their fiscal matters from the public. Ahead of Charles’s coronation, the Guardian launched an investigative report to cut through the “entrenched secrecy” that the paper argues was a “hallmark of [Elizabeth II’s reign]” and one that deprives the British people “of the most basic information about the monarchy.” It resulted in reporting that estimated King Charles’s personal fortune at £1.8 billion (the Palace later called this figure “a highly creative mix of speculation, assumption and inaccuracy”). The King’s assets include jewelry passed on from his mother (diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies—you name it, he’s got it) worth an estimated £533 million; inherited properties, including Balmoral and Sandringham; a fleet of cherished Rolls-Royces and Bentleys; and, of course, Her Majesty’s horses—several stables’ full that are said to be worth upward of £27 million.
Digging even deeper, investigations also showed that the late Queen and King Charles both took cash payments worth around £1.2 billion from “two hereditary estates that pay no tax,” in addition to the millions they receive in public funding for their official duties. And the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are the primary cash cows. In 2022, they collected £21 million from each, while a fierce debate continues as to whether these duchies actually belong to the British state. On top of this, the monarch also receives £86.3 million a year from the Sovereign Grant (made up of taxpayer contributions and a percentage of Crown Estate profit) for official royal duties, official travel, staff salaries, and the upkeep of properties. Regardless of the state of the country’s economy, this number does not go down, thanks to a so-called “golden ratchet” clause inserted by former Conservative prime minister David Cameron during his term. In fact, from 2025, the Sovereign Grant can expect a projected rise of £38.5 million (45 percent) thanks to an increase in Crown Estate profit after Charles secured a £1-billion-a-year wind-farm deal on part of its land. While the King made it clear he wants extra profit from the estate to “be directed for the wider good,” a percentage of that will also go back into the pockets of the royal family instead of the public purse. “This is at a time when nurses are receiving [a] 5 percent [pay rise] and other key public workers are still fighting for a fair wage,” said Nick Wall of internal pressure group Labour for a Republic. “This reward is morally unjustifiable, while also both anti-democratic and plain wrong. The people of this country should have their say on royal funding through debate between their elected representatives.” It’s worth noting that the royal family also cost the country approximately £345 million in security funding, which is not covered by the Sovereign Grant.
All of this heavily underlines the republican argument that, at the end of the day, monarchies look out for themselves and are propelled by their own agendas, interests, and bank accounts. This enormous fortune speaks volumes about the monarchy’s motivations for sticking around way beyond its sell-by date and why they use the idea of “serving the Crown” as a protective shield. If all of this is about duty to the state and commitment to a better Britain, then it doesn’t look so much like an ungodly amount of inherited wealth as it does well-earned compensation for services rendered. As long as they are cutting ribbons, sharing cute portraits of their children, and doing enough work, they trust the public will agree to keep them on as a “harmless” anachronism and a uniquely British spectacle. Just like their forebears, they will continue to roll out the carriages, unsheathe ceremonial swords, and parade the crown in a worn-thin campaign to keep their palaces and stay in the game.
After King George III went mad and was forced to abdicate in 1820, his son, George IV, nicknamed “Prinny,” assumed the throne. George IV’s heavy drinking and self-indulgence sorely tested the patience of the public and eventually caught up with him. He reigned as King for a brief and troubled ten years before his death. When his brother, William IV, ascended, he faced a disgruntled public and an institution in disarray. Known as “Sailor Billy” because of his storied career in the Royal Navy, he was the oldest person at that point to assume the throne, and a bit of a hopeless case. Legend has it that after a reform mob threw garbage and food at his royal carriage, the sailor king said, “I feel the Crown tottering on my head.” King Charles III usurped Sailor Billy as the oldest sovereign to take the throne, and one imagines that after the eggs thrown his way, not to mention the tepid response to his ascension, he, too, may one day feel the Crown teetering on his head.
15
Endgame
We ransomed our dignity to the clouds . . . We’re actors . . .
We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of our trade that someone would be watching. And then, gradually, no one was.
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
—Orson Welles, The Big Brass Ring
As I quietly made my way toward the center of a virtually empty Westminster Abbey, it was hard to believe that the unassuming wooden throne in front of me was a central figure in one of the country’s most ancient rituals. Patched up and timeworn, the faded wood and spotted gold Coronation Chair has been at the heart of Britain’s coronations for more than seven centuries. It’s the place where the Archbishop of Canterbury anoints the new monarch, where King Charles receives the royal regalia and, finally, feels the full symbolic weight of the Crown upon his brow.
With less than twenty-four hours left on the coronation countdown, the Abbey was a hive of hushed activity. Outdoor voices were left firmly at the door as workers quietly made necessary adjustments to the center stage, lint rollers at the ready to keep the somewhat garish-looking yellow carpet lint-free. Its color wasn’t tradition, but a choice made early on in the planning process so the area would “pop” on television (and, in a lucky coincidence, show some solidarity toward Ukraine—a running theme in the 2023 activities of the royal family).
Even after twelve years of covering the royal story, it was difficult not to feel the gravity of what was about to take place. The 335-pound Stone of Destiny, which was brought down from Edinburgh Castle four days earlier and was now sitting beneath the Coronation Chair, had enough history behind it for an entire book of its own. The Anglican Church and the royal family have used this humble slab of sandstone as part of the inauguration ceremony for almost a thousand years. Covering these details for rolling ABC News coverage felt like reporting from a liminal space, somewhere between venerable old traditions and an episode of Game of Thrones. But one thing was for sure—the royal family had set the most dramatic stage possible.
Westminster Abbey has been the backdrop for coronations since 1066. The church has also hosted more than sixteen royal weddings and even more funerals, including the global events of Princess Diana’s and Queen Elizabeth II’s memorials. For me, Westminster is also where I clocked in for my first major event as a royal reporter—covering the elaborate nuptials of William and Kate on April 29, 2011. Back then it was an entirely new world to me, and I marveled at the thirty-three cameras that were discreetly set up to broadcast as many angles of the fairy-tale ceremony as possible. More than a decade later, production teams strategically placed exactly 150 cameras—now smaller and more technologically advanced—to capture Charles’s big day in a level of detail unimaginable back in the early 2000s. The job at hand: broadcast every movement, every bead of sweat, and every glistening eye in full 4K resolution.
The contrast between then and now is a stark and clarifying one. When William and Kate tied the knot, we were all still caught up in the royal fantasy—the enchanting wedding provided the magic the family and institution desperately needed at the time. After a dry spell, the couple’s union made the royal family exciting again and threw a spotlight on the possibilities of the next generation. The cameras were there to catch this aspect, too, but the fairy-tale filter was still on and the royal machinery provided the requisite timeless grandeur. But after several years of family disintegration, disturbing revelations, and disquieting investigations, the soft focus is gone and so is a lot of the myth, both entombed with Queen Elizabeth II. Just like those 4K cameras at Charles’s coronation, we can now see the world at large more clearly, at times forced to take in unvarnished realities at a disorienting pace. And, despite institutional resistance, the monarchy is now just another part of this unmasked world.
The May 6, 2023, crowning of King Charles III was the first chance for the majority of the nation, and those around the globe, to witness the spectacle of a British coronation. Though the crowds in the rainy streets of London hoping to catch a glimpse of the Golden State Carriage or that iconic balcony wave were fewer than we saw for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee just a year earlier, it still briefly brought the nation’s capital to a standstill.
With millions tuned in around the world, it was the perfect opportunity for the Firm to recaptivate and restore some of that lost mystique. Commentary notes that Buckingham Palace sent to those of us preparing for hours of television coverage placed emphasis on the fact that the ceremony was one thousand years old. But a closer look at the past reveals a different history. In fact, the type of ceremony the institution prepared for Charles dates back only to 1902, when King Edward VII was crowned. Sure, there are still medieval elements, but the majority is a more recent creation as technology allowed the world to start witnessing such events. Even the regalia on display aren’t originals—those were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 during the country’s brief flirtation with republicanism. As journalist and polemicist Fintan O’Toole pointed out, “The odd thing about these British royal ceremonials is that they have become more important as the power and majesty they are supposed to project has diminished.”
For Charles, this wouldn’t be the first time a little creative license was needed to stir the emotions and imaginations of those watching. His investiture as a twenty-year-old Prince of Wales in 1969 was in fact largely created by his filmmaker uncle, Lord Snowdon, who shaped the ceremony to look arcane and mysterious, despite the fact that they used modern props to drape the occasion. While it looked like Charles’s ornate crown was topped by a gold orb, it was actually just an electroplated plastic Ping-Pong ball. Snowdon later called the event “bogus as hell.”
They say a coronation is a mirror for a monarch’s reign, and Charles certainly tried to put a twenty-first-century stamp on the service. He chopped the ceremony down to two hours from three, and his procession route was just a quarter of his mother’s coronation’s sojourn in 1953. And though guests included monarchs from Spain, Bhutan, the Netherlands, and more, there was also representation from the general public on the 2,300-person guest list—many of those were honorable people who had bettered their communities through charitable work or volunteering. Less aristocracy, more meritocracy. There were a few celebrity sightings, too, courtesy of Lionel Richie and Katy Perry, both ambassadors for charities founded by Charles. It was still by and large an Anglican ceremony, but Charles also cosigned a new pledge authored by the Archbishop of Canterbury, promising that the Church of England “will seek to foster an environment where people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely.” This was an important distinction for a man who has an impressive collection of books on all faiths, from Judaism to Buddhism, and once called Islam “one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity.”
Of course, tradition leaves little room for true modernization. As he did for Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding ceremony, Charles requested a Black gospel choir to perform at his coronation. The talented Ascension Choir was handpicked for the job, though it was impossible not to notice that the choir didn’t sing gospel music. Their presence, said journalist Nels Abbey, could have been something truly new and refreshing—a change to what is considered the norm in worship in the Church of England. “It would be diversity doing what diversity is meant to do,” he said. “What we had instead was a group of excellent Black singers swaying to a [Anglican] hymn.”
And there were also changes that were not so well received. Not long before the big day, Lambeth Palace—the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury—announced that, for the first time in coronation history, the public was invited to make an “homage” to the King and “pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors” during the coronation. But this news was met with widespread criticism in the public and the media—a request to pledge allegiance felt like a ridiculous call for servility, a command reverberating from feudal times or heard on state-mandated television in North Korea. Sources told me that Charles absolutely hated the unnecessary, tone-deaf addition. After the backlash (which saw 84 percent of people polled in Britain say they would refuse to do such a thing), Buckingham Palace officials instructed the archbishop’s office to tone it down. On the day itself, the archbishop instead “invited” those in the congregation who wished to “offer their support” to recite an oath swearing allegiance to the monarch and the Crown. To most, however, it still seemed extremely old-fashioned—and undemocratic.
This blip on the radar proved a harbinger for some rough waters ahead. The coronation was a moment Charles had spent his adult life thinking about and planning for, particularly during his mother’s later years. But, despite ample preparation time, his arrival did not go particularly smoothly. Pulling up to Westminster Abbey for their grand entrance, the King and Queen were forced to wait in their carriage for six minutes before other family members arrived. “We can never be on time,” Charles angrily muttered to Camilla. “There is always something . . . This is boring.” A Buckingham Palace source initially blamed the delay on the Wales family for departing Kensington Palace late, but a spokesperson for the Prince of Wales was quick to chime in with the detail that Charles’s carriage had actually traveled from Buckingham Palace to Westminster too quickly, resulting in the premature arrival. The two households’ narratives at odds, once again.
As he slowly walked through the church’s Great West Door and under its ten statues of twentieth-century martyrs, Charles looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders—and it wasn’t because of the nearly five-pound St. Edward’s Crown on his head. His grandfather King George VI’s heavy velvet Robe of State from 1937 appeared to pull his shoulders down even farther into a stoop that aged him beyond his seventy-four years. Some sources said it was nerves, others called it dread, but, as he and Queen Camilla sat down on matching throne chairs, he bit the insides of his pale, powdered cheeks, looking more like he was enduring the ceremony rather than basking in it. Though much could go wrong elsewhere, he didn’t need to worry about his speaking parts. The few sentences—such as “All this I promise to do” and “I am willing”—that Charles had to recite over the next 120 minutes were (much to the amusement of viewers) printed out in large font on cue cards that were held up directly in his line of vision for easy reading.
